Oklahoma Gov. Fallin signs agreement to uphold national standards to curb prison rapes
- Graham Lee Brewer
- May 15, 2014
- News OK
Gov. Mary Fallin signed an agreement Thursday with the U.S. Department of Justice committing to bring the state Corrections Department up to full compliance with a set of national standards aimed at curbing sexual assaults in prisons.
Gov. Mary Fallin on Thursday signed an agreement to continue to uphold a set of national standards aimed at curbing sexual assault in prisons, avoiding a potential loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds.
Signed into law by Congress in 2003, the Prison Rape Elimination Act establishes guidelines for identifying and decreasing the causes of sexual victimization in America’s various prison systems. It has been implemented across the country, in both federal and state prisons.
In February, the U.S. Department of Justice sent letters to state governors asking them to either sign an agreement to continue to comply with the act’s standards or commit 5 percent of Justice Department prison funds to achieve full compliance. It is the first time since the program’s inception that federal officials are asking for states to commit to its standards.
Thursday was also the deadline to sign the agreement. According to the National Criminal Justice Association, a Washington D.C.-based crime prevention nonprofit, had Fallin chosen not to sign, it could have cost the state Corrections Department more than $180,000 in funding.
In a letter of response sent Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Fallin agreed to use that funding to help the state reach full compliance, but she also took issue with what she called the DOJ’s “nearly a decade of inaction” on PREA.
Fallin wrote that while she is committed to the goals of PREA, some of the DOJ’s rules regarding compliance, including the Thursday deadline, create financial burdens for states and do not “render measurable and evidence-based outcomes.” She took issue particularly with what she sees as a delayed audit process, giving states too little time to comply with the program’s standards by the deadline.
“States are threatened with the reduction of federal funding for services to victims of crime because of tardy, unrealistic standards that ignore the operational realities of the adult and juvenile correctional industry,” Fallin wrote.
Jesse Lerner-Kinglake, a spokesman for Just Detention International, an international human rights organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in detention facilities, said while he does agree with Fallin the act’s standards took too long to finalize, states did have adequate time to comply.
“However, they (the standards) were released two years ago, and states knew long before that the rules were forthcoming,” Lerner-Kinglake said in an email. “It’s also not the case that the standards run contrary to PREA. The standards call for commonsense measures that, if implemented, will significantly reduce sexual abuse behind bars — which is exactly what Congress intended when it passed the law.”
Only one governor has refused to sign the agreement, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Perry said the act’s standards would violate state labor laws and infringe on Texas criminal laws.
“The rules appear to have been created in a vacuum with little regard for input from those who daily operate prisons and local jails,” Perry wrote on March 28.
In January, both Fallin’s office and the state Corrections Department declined to testify at an annual Justice Department hearing in Washington on the act, citing a pending lawsuit concerning alleged sexual assaults at a state prison and the department’s lack of a permanent director. Current corrections director Robert Patton had not yet been hired.
Eleven women serving time in Oklahoma prisons filed a federal lawsuit in 2013 claiming they were sexually assaulted by three guards at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center.
A 2012 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, done in conjunction with the act, found 15.3 percent of the inmates surveyed at the female facility reported some form of sexual abuse or rape from another inmate, the highest in the nation for female institutions.
“There’s no question that what we’re observing here is a significant amount of physical force, pressure, and coercion are involved,” Allen Beck, a BJS statistician, told The Oklahoman in January about the sexual abuse in the facility.
Millicent Newton-Embry, the state Corrections Department’s PREA coordinator, was the facility’s warden at the time of the alleged assaults and is named in the suit. The department is declining comment on the law and its enforcement in Oklahoma prisons until the lawsuit is resolved.
Originally posted at http://newsok.com/oklahoma-gov.-fallin-signs-agreement-to-uphold-national-standards-to-curb-prison-rapes/article/4824370/?page=2/